As a pediatric physical therapist, Dan Worthington has worked closely with kids and parents, including his own journey of raising a son with disabilities. His insights on forgiveness, resilience, and the unseen ways God shows up in our lives are truly inspiring.
Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law podcast. I’m relationship expert and master certified coach LeAnn Austin. I’ll help you create more connection, love, and fun with others, yourself, and your daughter-in-law.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, episode #168: Quick to Forgive with Dan Worthington
I love observing and connecting with other humans. especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the amazing Dan sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. All right Dan, tell us a little bit about you.
Yes. I have been married 30 years, so a long time. She’s put up with me for a long time. I, for about 20 to 25 of those years, I’ve been a pediatric physical therapist, working with children with varying degrees of disabilities. Usually more lifelong disabilities, not necessarily the broken arm or the broken leg, although I have worked with some like that. Most of it is more longer disabilities like cerebral palsy or down syndrome or autism or something else.
Awesome, so cool. All right. So how do you incorporate love into your business and life and how does that impact your relationships?
Okay. So, incorporating love in our business is pretty easy cause I work with kids. I work with kids from newborn to, well young adults to 21 years of age. And so, you know, it’s very easy to incorporate love when you’re working with little kids. Cause all they do is exude love and you know, they come up and want to give you hugs and it’s pretty awesome. I do in home therapy, but also part of that is sometimes going to parks and meeting the kids at the parks and playing with the kids at the parks. So it’s very interesting.
I would say one thing that I always see that I always talk with. I usually talk, have moms that I work with, but occasionally I get the opportunity to work with dads. And one thing that’s somewhat saddening over the time that I’ve done my job is seeing how a child with a lifelong disability can, bring some stress. A lot of stress to a relationship, and men and women grieve very differently. And I see some animosity that builds up. A lot of times I see the mothers feeling animosity towards the husbands because the mothers grieve very openly and fathers often grieve very privately.
I can’t tell you the amount of tears I cried with my son, in the shower, because a lot of times the father feels they have to go out to work. They have to keep everything together. They feel they’re showing their love by providing for the family and doing things for the family. And then the mother Is often at home and just going through everything with the child. And they feel that they are, that the father doesn’t love the child the way that the mother loves the child.
I’ve often talked to moms and dads and, you know, hey, you need to make sure y’all have a date night. That y’all move a lot together and remember why y’all fall in love with each other because it’s a very stressful time and a lot of guilt that they feel with everything going on. It can get displaced on their partner and, it can, you know, they need to keep their love life strong and together. Because having a mother and father that love each other, and love the child is the best thing for the child.
I am so glad you brought that to light because just sharing the different perspectives of the mom and of the dad and, you know, how impactful it can be and stressful for both of them. And how often times I think we too think our partner should act a certain way towards the child. And of course they don’t. We all, like you said, handle things differently and that’s the beauty of being a human. And we get to choose how we act. But just giving them that connection to really encourage love with each other, so that helps the child as well. That’s beautiful, thank you.
So tell me what is something you love about you and why? Okay, so I have thought about that a lot, and that’s hard to come up with something on what you love about yourself and why. And I kept thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it. And I guess, the best thing I can say is that what I love about myself is I’m usually very quick to forgive. I don’t really hold a grudges. If you’ve done me wrong, you know, we will get over it and then we’ll move on as if nothing ever happened. I love that. Beautiful characteristic. That’s awesome.
All right, so I love talking about connection with others and ourselves, and I think that the daughter-in-law, mother-in-law relationship is packed full of a whole bunch of examples. Any thoughts about a mother-in-law or daughter-in-law that you know?
Well, I have a mother-in-law, which, you know, it’s funny because you hear people talk about their mother-in-law and it’s usually not always in the best light, but I get along really well with my mother-in-law.
And then, my wife, for a short period of time, I say short period, it’s probably about three years. My mom moved in and lived with us. At first, she came up here. She was a teacher and she had to work and pay into retirement, but she also paid into social security. So she had to work and we’re paying social security for one more quarter to be able to qualify to get that money back. Also, that she paid into it.
So she came up here, but that was when we found out my son, his health problems, and he started having seizures while she was up here. And she was able to help and end her contract early. Then she stayed here and helped us with him through the very difficult times we had with him.
This is early on, you know, about 20 years ago with autism. And back then you could not get a diagnosis of autism because if you did, insurance would no longer pay for speech therapy, occupational therapy for the child with it. You would get a diagnosis, a pervasive developmental disorder, nonspecific PDD NOS and ABA was new. It was found to be very helpful.
And I remember, we tried to set that up and through miscommunications. We didn’t understand how expensive it was because insurance didn’t pay for it. And after the first visit, I was like, whoa, you know, they charged us for the time driving to our house from Emory, the time they’re at our house from Emory, driving back to Emory, and also the time that it took them to write the note. So they charge us for four hours for an hour visit. And the financial, we just couldn’t do that. My mother went and got trained in ABA and then worked with my son.
So it was interesting because you think daughter-in-law, mother-in-law kind of hard to live in the same house because you both, kind of have the nesting, this is, you know, my house. I’ve got a mess and I got to make it my house. And it was funny because my mom was rather short. She was five foot on a good day in heels. And she would try to help us reorganize in our cabinets.
And, you know, most women don’t like people reorganizing. And we’d go try to find something. You always had to think, okay, waist level and lower. Where did mom put it? Where did mom put it…waist level and lower. You know, I got to say that they worked out a great relationship, it worked really well.
You know, it’s a lot of give and take and understanding, but, you know, it’s worth it. We do it for other family members that are in our immediate family. So, you know, doing it for an in-law shouldn’t be too hard of a stretch. I love that. And the give and take and the almost making a joke out of it. Like, okay, waist level or lower, you know, we’ll find it. That’s so fun. That’s awesome.
All right. So anything else that you’d like to share? You know, when you talk about love and all that, I think the biggest thing is just, if you go in with an understanding heart, it always works better. There are some people that are not the greatest people, but for the most part, people want to try to get along and try to, you know, aren’t trying to take advantage of you.
And if you go with an understanding heart, and it’s these things sometimes from the other person’s perspective. Just like the incidents with the father and the mother, and grieving for a child that may have some disabilities or even grieving losses. You know, everybody grieves differently because they’re not grieving the way you want to doesn’t mean that they’re not feeling the pain and feeling it.
100 percent. One of my favorite quotes is you either love someone or you don’t understand them. Yeah, so I really think, I love that understanding heart because I think when we’re not feeling the love, it’s like wait a second if we can just take a step back and say what am I not understanding here, it can be really impactful.
And it’s interesting because I remember when we were going through the initial stages with with my son, you know, people would come up and I know they would mean well, by the way, say stuff like, oh, you’re so lucky. You’re so lucky to be blessed with this where you can have a child that, you know, I even had one person saying, you know, you can learn love is not reciprocated back and I’m like, who wants that? Who wants that with their child?
Really, you know, and then I, you know, just with the work that I do and over the decades I’ve done it, even nonverbal, very, very involved children, reciprocate love thinking that they’re just a inanimate object.
Or somewhat animate object that sits there, you know, even, though they can’t tell you, I love you, they do express it. And, you know, as you work with them, you see that and seeing that there is, you know, something there, you know, in every, every human in every file. And every human longs for that connection that you can make. Yes. I love that so much. Yes, exactly.
All right, so what’s your favorite quote about love and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships? Okay, so you’re going to have to help me. I sent it to you, but it was John chapter 9 verses 2-3, I believe. Yes. And I would like to tell you the story about how this became my favorite scripture. Perfect.
So, when I was going through the grieving process with my son and finding out all the problems we were having, I would read that scripture. And it was where the Savior and the apostles were walking by a blind man and the apostles asked him, who did sin, this man or his parents that are born blind? The Savior responded back, neither is so the works of God be manifest in him.
And so I’m thinking, okay, so if you have enough faith, if you pray enough, you can heal these individuals that have these disabilities. And it’s just us having enough faith and us having enough, praying enough, fasting enough, you can get this done. And that was the approach I took that, okay, if this isn’t working yet, then I haven’t done, I’m not doing it hard enough. I’m not doing it well enough. And, you know, you finally get to the point where you realize this isn’t working, this isn’t, you know, what is this, is this, does God not love me?
Does God not love my son? Does God, you know, why, what did I do wrong in my life? What, you know, kind of going into the, it must be a punishment on my son because of what I did. And I remember having, I hate to say, a shouting match with my mom, just because where I was when she was living here. And I’m like, you know, it’s not that I don’t believe there’s a God or anything. I just don’t think he cares anymore. I think those exact words I gave was, I don’t think he gives a damn. He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care about my son. He just doesn’t care.
And, you know, as mothers do, you know, she’s like, well, you know, I don’t think that’s not the way I feel, you know, you just need to pray. And, you know, maybe I’ll watch the kids for you so you and Heather can go to the temple. And so I went there and I was in the celestial room and, it was, while I was there that my eyes were actually opened to what works of God mean.
And you know, it’s not necessarily what we want it to be, but I will say this. I’ve seen my son, his spirit touch other people’s lives that were somewhat closed up and walled off and never would have, you know, anybody could talk to him and they would just, you know, that would be nice, but you know, you could tell that the spirit wasn’t touching them and he just bust through those walls. And you know, I don’t know fully what the works that they’ll be manifested through him are, but I’m seeing more and more what what it is.
And, you know, I’ll tell you another reason. I like that scripture, when I when I baptized him was eight years old and I confirmed him I had a small glimpse where I was able to feel the love God had for him. And that’s when I said, he’s who God wanted him to be. Yeah, and so I’ve been at peace with that since he’s eight, he’s 20 now, you know, what’s that 12 years.
Recently we had a neurologist appointment and, he was going over, we had some genetic testing done to see what was going on and what he was going through. Hey, you know, we had a spontaneous mutation, this gene, neither you or mom were carriers or had this. Mutation was just a spontaneous mutation and this gene, we have a high prevalence of cognitive delay and seizure activity with individuals that have this gene mutation. That’s okay.
And I wrote all that down and I came home and reported back to Heather what he said, and I almost missed it. She said it on her breath. It wasn’t my fault. And I was like, what do you mean your fault, you know, the whole time she had been thinking she must have ate something wrong. She took some type of medication wrong. She did something wrong, something she did caused it, or maybe it was her genes that were wrong, you know, and that no, it was a spontaneous. I said no, God, he’s here. He’s who God sent here. And he’s who God wants to be here. I said, you know, but I felt guilty then that I had never realized that she still carried that burden.
Oh, I can’t even imagine for both of you just to go through this for the past 20 plus years. And, I do love though, how you questioned God and you were like, wait. Does God even give a damn what’s going on? No, like questioning that and asking the tough questions that we deal with as we go through whatever trial we’re going through and being willing to look for answers to and to listen. I love that. Yeah. Oh, so beautiful. Dan. Yeah.
So works of God. Something to think about for sure. And it’s interesting what that means. Yeah, totally, it’s interesting. You can find a lot of cross references in the scriptures. It’s not miracles. It’s not just, you know, miracle of healing. That’s not it. So many other things. Yeah.
Well, thank you so much Dan, for sharing your love insights with us today. So beautiful. And you are such an example and your cute boy and your family and just so much love for you and all you share with everyone else. Really appreciate you. Well, thank you very much.
All right, y’all. Here is to quick to forgive, understanding, connection, and love. Have a good one.
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